Wacousta : a tale of the Pontiac conspiracy — Volume 2 eBook

enmity. Around this point, were collected numerous
canoes, filled also with warriors; and, at the moment
when the vessel, obeying the impulse given by her
flowing sails, glided from her anchorage, these followed,
scudding in her wake, and made a show of attacking
her in the stern. The sudden yawing of the schooner,
however, in bringing her tier of bristling ports into
view, had checked the ardour of the pursuing fleet;
and the discharge of a single gun, destroying in its
course three of their canoes, and carrying death among
those who directed them, had driven them back, in
the greatest hurry and confusion, to their yelling
and disappointed comrades.

The after-deck of the schooner presented a different,
though not less sombre and discouraging, scene.
On a pile of mattresses lay the light and almost inanimate
form of Clara de Haldimar; her fair and redundant
hair overshadowing her pallid brow and cheek, and
the dress she had worn at the moment of her escape
from the fort still spotted with the blood of her
generous but unfortunate preserver. Close at
her side, with her hands clasped in his, while he
watched the expression of deep suffering reflected
from each set feature, and yet with the air of one
pre-occupied with some other subject of painful interest,
sat, on an empty shot-box, the young man in sailor’s
attire, whose cutlass had performed the double service
of destroying his own immediate opponent, and avenging
the death of the devoted Baynton. At the head
of the rude couch, and leaning against a portion of
the schooner’s stern-work, stood his companion,
who from delicacy appeared to have turned away his
eyes from the group below, merely to cast them vacantly
on the dark waters through which the vessel was now
beginning to urge her course.

Such was the immediate position of this little party,
when the gun fired at the Indians was heard booming
heavily along the lake. The loud report, in exciting
new sources of alarm, seemed to have dissipated the
spell that had hitherto chained the energies and perception
of the still weak, but now highly excited girl.

“Oh, Captain Baynton, where are we?” she
exclaimed, starting up suddenly in terror, and throwing
her arms around him, who sat at her side, as if she
would have clung to him for protection. “Is
the horrid massacre not finished yet? Where is
Madeline? where is my cousin? Oh, I cannot leave
the fort without her.”

“Ha! where indeed is she?” exclaimed the
youth, as he clasped his trembling and scarcely conscious
burden to his chest, “Almighty God, where is
she?” Then, after a short pause, and in a voice
of tender but exquisite anguish, “Clara, my
beloved sister, do you not know me? It is not
Baynton but your brother, who now clasps you to his
breaking heart.”